Spirits Rise Sidestories
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: What it sounds like. I'll be putting stories that don't fit into the main Spirits Rise continuity here. Expect alternate endings, behind-the-scenes moments, and lots of OCs. The rating will go up if and when it becomes necessary. Rating raised to K for one swear word.
1. Dilly-Dally

Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

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Dilly-Dally

"So tired."

"Lon stinks."

"Very much so."

A muffled groan, followed by the rustle of sheets.

"You're just going to go to bed like that?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Delilah, you're filthy!"

"Like you're any better, Miss I-Fart-Perfume."

A gasp, then creaking springs and the thump of a pillow hitting its target. "You butthead!"

"Ow! Am not a butthead."

Breathing, shifting, two figures face one another across a room. Then, for a moment, silence.

Snickering. "You said 'butt'."

Another creak. "And you have no attention span."

The sound of a fist tapping a door makes itself known, and then becomes faster and more impatient, accompanied with a voice.

"Oy, twins! Hurry up and get out. Matron's on the warpath, and if I have to leave you behind to save my skin, I will."

"Shut up, Lon!"

A soft tapping of stocking feet, then a creak and a small voice asking, "Let me guess. You want us to help with yet another brilliant plan, specifically as bait?"

"Actually, no. I just wanted to ask you two to lie about the thing with the pulley and the duck feathers."

Silence, and the soft scuffing of another pair of feet joining the first at their post.

"Let me rephrase that." A thump as knees hit floor. "Please, please don't tell Matron about that. The rest I can get around, but if she finds out what I did with the uck-day eathers-fay, I'm ruined."

"What do you think, Delilah?"

"I think he needs to grovel a little bit more. And by a little, I mean a lot."

"But-"

"I have pond scum in my hair! There are no 'buts', now grovel, worm!" A step back. "I went too far, didn't I?"

"Yes, sister dear, you went too far." A sigh. "Lon?"

"Can we please just call it even?"

A pause.

"Delilah!"

"Come on, Dee. Have a heart?"

Grumbling, and a grudging, "Maybe."

A screeching sound like an overworked brake, the huff and puff of a bellows and the rustle of heavy skirts.

Breath hitches, followed by a gush of whispered words. "Please, please, please, please, please – I could do this all day, but Matron's after me – please, please, pretty please."

A weighted pause, and then an answer. "Fine. You owe me and Sheila twenty bucks, each."

"Done!" Relief.

"And don't call me Dee! I'm not a baby."

"To the second, says who? To the first, never! Bye!" The thud of running footsteps and a laughing voice round a corner and fade into obscurity.

Muffled laughter.

"It's not funny! I hate that nickname. It makes me sound like I'm three years old."

"Now, I'm sure it's a perfectly good name …somewhere."

A pause. "Please just get it over with."

Peals of rollicking laughter echo off the plain-painted walls of the room. They are cut short by the arrival of the skirts and bellows.

"Miss Delilah, Miss Sheila! Good afternoon. I trust you enjoyed yourselves?"

Scuffing feet, held breath, and fingers so tight on the door they creak. Finally, one answers. "Yes, Matron."

"Sheila!"

"What?"

Whispering. "What happened to 'if anyone asks, we lie'?"

"Nothing happened. Matron isn't just anyone."

"I can hear you just fine, young misses."

A slap on the back, a kick in the shins, and a chorus. "We're sorry about the mess, Matron."

Wheezing laughter. "Oh, it's quite alright, nothing a little elbow grease won't fix. However, there was one thing – which reminds me, have you seen that shiftless boy around anywhere?"

"You mean Cousin Lon? Yeah, he was just here."

A pause. "I'm surprised you told me so easily."

Flatly, "I have pond scum in my hair." Excitedly, "Is he gonna get grounded?"

"Most assuredly so, Miss Delilah. Ah, Miss Sheila, do you have anything to add?"

A breath. "No."

The tap of a low-heeled shoe on tile. "Very well then, I expect to see you both at dinner, completely clean and respectably dressed."

"Don't worry about that, Matron. We will be."

A creaking nod. "No dessert for a week, except fruit."

Loudly protesting, "What?"

"What, indeed. I know well how you like to stir up trouble, Miss Delilah, and where one young miss goes, the other will soon follow. You will not receive dessert, unless you would rather help young master Lon with the cleaning?"

A chorus of hastily babbled no's.

"As I thought. Good day, young misses."

Rustle, thud, tap-tap-tap fading into the distance.

A door swings shut, and now two relieved sighs.

"Sheila?"

"Yes?"

"Next time Lon wants to do anything involving animals, remind me to kick him."

"I'll wear my good boots just in case."

"Thanks." A sniff. "Ew. As long as we're too wired to sleep-"

"First dibs on the shower!"

"Hey, no fair!"

"'No fair' is when you use all the hot water."

"I have very long hair. It takes time to get it looking this good."

A snort.

"Why, you…"

The thwap-thwap of flip-flops as two girls race to the bathroom, and the sound of a door slamming.

"Dang it."

A muffled, "I called dibs."

Flop down on the floor.

As the taps squeak on, a query, "So, why didn't you lie about the, um, duck feathers?"

"Matron didn't ask."

"But won't Lon be upset with you for ratting him out?"

"I didn't tell her."

The flick of a switch, and the shower begins running. "You really stink, Delilah."

"And yet, you're in such a hurry to wash."

The reply may or may not have been a muffled, "Shut up."

Laughter.

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A/N: The perspective is something of an experiment. I understand if it's a bit hard to follow.

"Matsuri, why are you starting yet another story when you have so many in progress?" Technically, I'm not. This is a prequel/sidefic to Psyche.


	2. The New Day

Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Memory" by Barbra Streisand

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The New Day

At a dingy Greyhound bus stop, two figures bundled in coats and scarves dragged their tired bodies across the waiting room, boots scuffing on faded tile. The larger figure, a woman with slate-colored hair in a sensible bun, pushed a loaded luggage cart with three trunks and a duffel bag strapped to it. The girl following close behind her, all knees and elbows and limp red hair, dragged a smaller trunk with old stamps all over it and a white patch with a blue letter "M" sewn on. She huffed, trying to keep up with the woman's longer legs.

"Ma! Wait for me!"

The woman paused, looking back over her shoulder. "Maddie? We should hurry or we'll miss our pick-up." Her eyes widening and tone softening, she continued, "Do you need to rest? I could take your trunk, if it's getting too heavy."

"No," the girl snapped. "I can do it! Just don't walk so fast." A beat, then she added, "Please, Ma."

Her mother looked upset, but only pressed her lips shut and made herself walk more slowly. It wasn't easy. They'd had to go halfway across the country over the last few days, to the city of her father's stories – and not the good kind of stories, where the serving-girl became a princess. They had been the sort of stories where centuries-old blood feuds turned into full-out urban wars, corrupt officials held most of the real power, and darker powers pulled their strings. However, at this point, she had no place else to go. If nothing else, her daughter's strangeness would not be out of place here.

The two of them went outside. The air was thick and reeking with chemical smoke, and the clouds where so thick the sun was practically invisible. The woman looked around frantically, looking for a sign. Suddenly, she caught sight of an old man standing next to a large black van, holding up a sign with the phrase "New Meat" on it in red ink, crossed out in black with "Ellison" underneath. That was them…

Maddie looked up from where one wheel of her trunk had gotten caught in a particularly deep crack in the sidewalk and saw what had her mother so upset. She gulped. There was always a chance that it was an isolated practical joker, but that didn't explain why that old man hadn't just used a new piece of cardboard. It couldn't have been that hard to find one, if he'd had time to correct the sign.

Swallowing her discomfort, the woman drew herself up and firmly walked up to the old man. "Faulkner?" she asked, trying to sound authoritative without being abrupt.

The man cackled. "I work for 'em, sure. You the new girl?" he rasped.

She started. It wasn't every day a forty-plus woman was referred to as a "girl", but she supposed that from his advanced age, nearly anyone would seem young. She hesitated, not wanting to seem rude and eventually settling on a simple introduction. "Yes, I'm Bettie Ellison. Elizabeth," she corrected.

He tensed as though he was getting ready to move very quickly. "Who the hell do you think-" he cut himself off as he caught sight of the girl, who but for the color of her face and eyes looked very much like a younger version of the Ellison woman. "You're related then?" he ventured.

Bettie nodded, getting ready to use one of the introduction speeches she'd been practicing for most of the trip. She was slightly relieved, then greatly worried as the man went right past her and stopped in front of the girl, who froze at the sight of a ragged old man in a strange, loose coverall. "Madeline Ellison?" he asked.

Maddie nodded, unsure in this strange environment. This man was a stranger, but so were most of the people she'd seen on the way here. She was shocked when he knelt down on his knees and asked in a subservient tone, "Do you have any orders for me, Mistress Ellison?"

"N-no," she managed to say.

"May I take your bag, Mistress?"

"Uh…" she looked at her mother for guidance. It was a sign of just how tired and off-balance she was that the normally poised woman could only shrug helplessly, open-mouthed. "Um, yes, please."

Wordlessly, he took the trunk, unstrapped it from the wheeled metal frame they had bought four stops back, and walked back across the sidewalk and the faded asphalt parking lot. He opened the car's trunk and put the bag away. He got up, slammed the trunk shut with a loud bang, and shuffled over to the front driver side of the van. He opened the driver's door, reaching over and starting the car with a loud backfire.

Madeline looked at her mother and shouted, "Wait!"

The man shuffled back to where she was and asked, "Yes, Mistress?"

"What about Ma's bags?"

He looked dully at the woman, suddenly small in her thick winter coat, and said, "She can walk, can't she?"

Indignant, the girl shrieked, "She's my ma! You can't make her walk! She doesn't even know where this place is." At this, Maddie turned back to her mother and asked, "Do ya?"

"No," she said quietly.

"See?" the girl continued. "She has to come with me."

The man looked over at the car, then down at her and asked again, "Do you have any orders, Mistress?"

You could almost see the wheels clicking into place in the woman's head. "Madeline, could you ask him to take the rest of the bags and let me ride with you?" Her tone made it obvious that this was Not a Suggestion, to be ignored at wayward relatives' peril.

Maddie demanded, "Ma's riding with us, and you help put our bags away, too."

The man shuffled over to her, unstrapping the luggage and picking up one of the heavy trunks and the duffel bag like they weighed nothing. Surprisingly quickly, all the bags were safely put away and he opened the far-rear curbside door. "If you'd take a seat, Mistress."

Slowly, the girl walked across the sidewalk and across the asphalt of the parking lot to the car. She climbed onto the high side of the van, maneuvering onto the seat and plopping herself down. She made to shuffle aside to make space for her mother at the same time as the old man made to shut the door.

Bettie put one hand on his arm to stop him, which was met by a flat stare. "Stop," he barked. Lowering his voice, he muttered, "Family policy. Servants don't ride with Family. You're lucky you don't have to walk."

"What?" she gasped. "I'm her mother."

"You're not one of _them_. The Touched, the Machine-Talkers, whatever you call it, doesn't matter. _They're_ Family. Everyone else does as they say and doesn't push it. That's how it is, and if you want to be allowed to stay anywhere near the kid, you'll behave."

"Are you threatening me?" she whispered incredulously. Last chance or not, no one was going to separate her and her remaining daughter. If this stranger wanted to play, she'd play.

"No, I'm telling you," he half-whispered, sounding increasingly desperate. "I just do as I'm told, and what I'm told is servants don't ride with Family. Please, just go up front. You'll be right next to me if I try anything."

Bettie Ellison remembered how her mother had told her the story of "Hansel and Gretel". A couple with two children during a famine had not had enough to eat, and the wife had talked her husband into taking the children out to the woods. The first and second times, Hansel had a plan, and they left a trail of buttons or some such they followed back. The third time, they had only bread crusts, and the abandoned children's trail of breadcrumbs was eaten by birds. Lost, they'd smelled something sweet baking and found a house made of gingerbread and other sugary treats, and been invited in by a kindly old woman who fed them full to bursting. It was only after they were full and fat that Gretel found out the woman was an evil witch who fattened up children to eat. Hansel was locked in a cage while Gretel stoked the fire. In the end, Gretel had gotten her brother free, and the children tricked the witch into her own oven and closed the door on her, where she died in agony, doomed by her own wickedness.

Now she and her daughter were in the witch's house, but the cage was in the child's own mind, and Bettie was no Gretel. Frozen in terror, seeing the jaws of the trap close in, she weighed her options. She could grab the child, run, and be on the next bus out of town, but their belongings would be gone. More importantly, where would they go? She could call for help, but she would either draw more cronies, or horrible criminals that would show no mercy to even a young girl like her daughter. She could fight, but no, if the man had been sent by the Faulkners, he would likely not even be slightly inconvenienced by an ordinary housewife like her, or even a very special child like her daughter.

No.

"All right, but, please, could I have a moment to speak to her?"

He nodded once, stiffly, and rasped, "Hurry up, or I'll leave you behind."

She didn't doubt he meant it. As he shuffled around, Bettie blinked her eyes shut, hard. She drew herself up to her full height of just over five foot two and met Madeline's wide, panicked purple-blue eyes with her own cloud-gray, her face set in determination. There would be time for womanly weakness later. Right now, her daughter's future was at stake.

"Maddie."

The child made a small noise. "Yes, Ma? You're not sending me off, are you? Like-" she choked off the words, but they both knew what she meant. Without her, her family would be free to live normal lives in their normal little town. For both of her parents, the choices had been absolutely obvious, and inevitably very different.

"No I am not, and I never will." Not if I have anything to say about it, she thought. "I'm just going to sit up front with our driver for the trip." Lowering her voice, she continued, "I want to be able to see the route clearly, just in case."

Maddie nodded. That made sense. Even tired and scared and lonely, she could tell it wasn't the real reason, but it still made sense, and that would help keep the scarier parts of her mind quiet, at least for a little while.

Gripping the car door tightly, Bettie stepped back and began to close it, but a small hand got in the way. "Maddie! Be careful. You could have gotten hurt," she chided, slipping into the persona of a worried mother.

"I know, Ma," she replied, quiet and calm, not at all like her usual jittery self. She met her mother's eyes, for the first time swapping their places as minder and little one, not that she knew it then. She said very clearly, "I love you. Always, no matter what. That's what family is: no matter what."

There was a moment's silence, broken by the sound of birds pecking at the bread crusts in the parking lot, the rumble of the car's engine and the still-nameless man's impatient grunts. The message was clear. Bettie shut the door, ran up to the front and got in the passenger side of the van next to the nameless man. He peeled out of the parking lot, muttering about being behind schedule.

From somewhere behind her, Bettie heard a cheerful, muffled, "Chin up, Ma! We're going to meet new family, aren't we?"

Shoulders shaking, face contorting, Bettie bit down on her scarf and burst into tears.

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A/N: A little background piece. Yes, this is a younger Maddie Fenton, from before she was a Fenton. I've tried to reconcile what we see of her background in canon with the one I'm constructing for the Spirits Rise Verse. Yes, Agatha still exists, she just doesn't show up here. She and Maddie are essentially estranged country cousins, only Maddie got very unlucky when a certain recessive trait combined with a few odd books and old gadgets started rewiring her brain. It's been alluded to before.


End file.
